The representation of sexual violence in ction series: the case of
I
May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020)
La representación de la violencia sexual en las series de cción: el caso de I
May Destroy You (HBO, 2020)
doxa.comunicación |
nº 36, pp. 125-144
| 125
January-June of 2023
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
González-Fernández, S. (2023). e representation of sexual violence in ction series: the case of
I May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020).
Doxa
Comunicación
, 36, pp. 125-144.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n36a1752
Sara González-Fernández.
She holds a
PhD in Communication from the University of Seville, a Master’s Degree in
Screenwriting, Narrative and Audiovisual Creativity and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. She works as a Professor in
the Department of Marketing and Communication at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication at the University
of Cádiz. Previously, she taught at the Department of Journalism at the University of Málaga and at the Department of
Information and Communication at the University of Extremadura. She is a member of the research group COM&SOC
–Communication and Social Sciences– (SEJ-619) at the University of Seville. Her research focuses on violence in the
media, audiovisual narrative and digital journalism.
Universidad de Cádiz, España
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-7773-5318
Abstract:
is paper analyses the acts of sexual violence in the miniseries
I
May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020), with the objective of nding out how
they are treated in ction and identifying the main dening features
of their representation from three main perspectives: the individuals
involved (aggressor and victim), the act of sexual violence committed
and the consequences of said act for the victim. To do this, we will
use a methodology focused on content analysis and, based on an
analysis sheet, the data obtained from the 12 episodes analyzed are
recorded and categorized for subsequent analysis and interpretation.
e results show that the representation of sexual violence is carried
out from a feminist perspective, far from stereotypes that contribute
to perpetuating the male hegemonic perspective, and that said
representation has an informative vision which aims to educate the
viewer’s gaze in terms of consent and sexual freedom.
Keywords:
Aggressor; ction; series; victim; sexual violence.
Resumen:
En este trabajo se analizan los actos de violencia sexual de la miniserie
I May Destroy You (HBO, 2020) para conocer qué tratamiento se hace
en la cción de ellos e identicar los principales rasgos denitorios de
su representación desde tres grandes perspectivas: los personajes impli
-
cados (agresor y víctima), el acto de violencia sexual acometido y las
consecuencias de dicho acto para la víctima. Para ello, se recurre a una
metodología centrada en el análisis de contenido y, a partir de una
-
cha de análisis, se registran y se categorizan los datos obtenidos de los
12 episodios analizados para su posterior análisis e interpretación. Los
resultados ponen de maniesto que la representación de la violencia
sexual se hace desde una perspectiva feminista, alejada de estereotipos
que contribuyan a perpetuar la perspectiva hegemónica masculina y
que cuenta con una visión divulgativa que pretende educar la mirada
del espectador en materia de consentimiento y libertad sexual.
Palabras clave:
Agresor; cción; series; víctima; violencia sexual.
Received: 07/08/2022 - Accepted: 02/12/2022 - Early access: 07/12/2022 - Published: 01/01/2023
Recibido: 07/08/2022 - Aceptado: 02/12/2022 - En edición: 07/12/2022 - Publicado: 01/01/2023
<p>[Enlace de URL / hc (has AS)]</p>
<p>[Enlace de URL / hc (has AS)]</p>
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The representation of sexual violence in ction series: the case of
I May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020)
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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1. Introduction
Sexual violence has become one of the most pressing problems in our society but it is still “one of the most silenced crimes and
with the highest rate of impunity worldwide” (UN Women, 2021, p. 11). It is a complex reality that aects people of any gender,
age, race, economic and sociocultural level, although women and girls are the most vulnerable groups to become victims of
any act of sexual violence. us, this type of violence is framed within gender violence, since what its intention is to harm a
person for reasons of gender, making use of social inequality and abuse of power. us, its consequences go further from the
individual sphere. at is why victims of sexual violence are prone to developing a high degree of secondary victimization; this
implies an increase in their suering as a result of the damage caused by the institutions involved in the case, which have a
distorted image both of this type of crime and of the victims themselves. is leads the victims to fear, for example, not being
believed, being blamed or having to confront their aggressor, among other aspects (Córdoba, 2022).
e sexual violence suered by women is understood as a global problem and as “a powerful mechanism of social control that
prevents them from both appropriating the public space and making use of their autonomy and freedom” (Cobo, 2019, p. 138).
Understanding sexual violence in a broad sense and not only as rape has allowed an evolution both from the educational,
cultural and penal point of view in order to contribute to making the ght against this social scourge more and more eective.
Despite this, it is still dicult to nd a unitary denition of sexual violence, since it is a phenomenon with multiple edges
which holds a very important cultural component that conditions its interpretation. Sexual violence refers to any instance in
which an unwanted sexual act is consummated or attempted through threats, force, intimidation or coercion and which can
cause serious damage to the physical and mental health of the victim. e World Health Organization denes sexual violence
as:
Any sexual act, attempt to perform a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or actions to market or otherwise use a
person’s sexuality under duress by another person, regardless of the person’s relationship to the victim, in any setting, including
the home and the workplace (WHO, 2013).
Regardless of the denition, sexual violence is synonymous with an attack on the sexual freedom of another individual, a
violation of a right that, through imposition, can be exercised through bodily contact or without it, with physical violence
or intimidation or without it. erefore, consent is congured as the essential key which will determine whether an act is
considered sexual violence or not; so much so that there are many aggressors who base their defense on the diuse limits
that exist on sexual consent (Cense, Bay-Cheng and Van Dijk, 2018). However, “consent cannot be inferred when there is
force, threat, coercion or use. No action of the victim can be considered consent when she is unable to give it or when there
is a relationship of power or inuence (Vázquez and Vázquez, 2021, p. 9). e International Criminal Court and the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence of the Rome Statute share this concept. e principles of proof regarding sexual consent in Rule 70
state that:
a) Consent may not be inferred from any word or conduct of the victim when force, threat of force, coercion or taking advantage
of a coercive environment have diminished her ability to give free and voluntary consent.
b) Consent may not be inferred from any word or conduct of the victim when the latter is capable of giving free consent.
c) Consent cannot be inferred from the victim’s silence or lack of resistance to the alleged sexual violence.
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d) e credibility, honor or sexual availability of the victim or a witness cannot be inferred from the sexual nature of the prior or
subsequent behavior of the victim or a witness (UN Women, 2021, p. 43).
e verbal or non-verbal acceptance that an individual gives freely and with which they indicate their willingness to participate
in a sexual act is what dierentiates an imposition from a choice. And that means the absence of violence and of non-
consensual sexual activity (Humphreys & Herold, 2007; Jozkowski & Peterson, 2013). Eective communication so that there
are no misunderstandings or misinterpretations is what guarantees the free choice of an individual to have sexual relations,
despite the fact that the word “yes” is not the only way to show that acceptance. As Hickman and Muelhlenhard (1999) point
out, there are multiple behaviors with which consent is suggested: from direct to indirect verbal language and from direct
and indirect non-verbal language to non-response. Be that as it may, the truth is that sexual consent has a strong cultural
component in which gender inequality plays a very relevant role. us, consent is inserted in the sex/gender system and is
sustained on unequal positions: “men play the active role of asking, insisting and convincing: harassing; women, the passive
role, to be requested, to be the object of insistence and to consent: to resist” (Pérez, 2016, p. 758).
e invisibility of sexual violence, the reduction of this crime to isolated incidents carried out by men who have been tempted
by women who are in public spaces to which they do not belong (Bernárdez-Rodal, López-Priego and Padilla-Castillo, 2021)
or the conceptualization that it is something natural for the aggressors, usually men, to attack and something natural to accept
by the victims, usually women, makes it impossible today to know the true magnitude of sexual violence in society. A diculty
to which we must add the current crisis occurring in modern patriarchies, which, instead of facilitating the disappearance of
this type of crime, has led to “the development of more subtle and imperceptible discrimination strategies” (Baquerín, 2021, p.
9). Along these lines, we must also not forget the lack of complaints on the victims’ side. e omission of the crime, ignorance,
insecurity, the feeling of guilt or the lack of protection for the victims contribute to making it very complex to prevent, act and
prosecute acts of these characteristics, even more so in cultures where patriarchy is strongly established.
is work is framed in this context of sexual violence, consent, aggressors and victims, which analyzes the ctional miniseries
I May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020) in order to answer the following research questions: How is sexual violence represented in this
miniseries? From what perspective is it staged? Does it show a stereotyped vision of sexual violence or is it trying to break with
it?
Based on these questions, the main objective of this work is the following: to analyze the representation of sexual violence
suered by the characters of
I May Destroy You
in its twelve episodes, an objective that is complemented by two secondary
objectives (SO):
–
SO1: To know the dierent manifestations and types of sexual violence.
–
OS2: To identify its main dening features, emphasizing the gure of the victim.
To achieve these objectives, a methodology focused on the analysis of mixed content is used, in which, based on an ad hoc
analysis le, the data is categorized into three large blocks: Characters, Acts of sexual violence and Consequences of sexual
violence. is is a useful and innovative methodology, not only for this work but also for the entire scientic community, since
it contributes to understanding the treatment and the perspective from which the acts of sexual violence that take place in this
ctional miniseries are represented.
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I May Destroy You
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ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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1.1. Sexual violence in ction
Fiction series are congured as cultural products in which, through their discourses, they are capable of creating awareness and
generating knowledge that is inserted and interacts in society. Audiovisual language contributes to the constitution of viewers
as people (Fernández-Castrillo and Lara, 2022), so much so that, from it, social imaginaries are formed and disseminated
and, in them, violence is congured as one of the narrative elements that have the most presence. at is so because violence
in ction has the ability to arouse multiple emotions in the viewer, from fear, anguish, surprise or fascination. Its intrinsic
characteristics make it easy to resort to it as part of audiovisual entertainment, since it is a phenomenon that, despite not being
natural, has a universal scope and is rooted in all those communities in which there are social interactions between two or
more individuals (Saavedra, 2022).
e representation of violence in ctional content has been characterized by the stereotyping with which it is staged on the
screen. So much so that when women transgress their gender role, they usually appear distorted in order to damage their
feminine identity:
Incapable of subverting the relationship of domination, they have the eect, at least, of conrming the dominant image of women
as evil beings, whose completely negative identity is essentially made up of prohibitions [...], from magic, cunning, lies or passivity
(in the sexual act above all), even the possessive love of the possessed, that of the Mediterranean mother or the maternal wife, who
victimizes and blames herself by victimizing herself and oering her unlimited surrender and suering in silence as a gift with no
possible return or as an unpayable debt (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 26-27).
However, despite the fact that the studies carried out to date on gender stereotypes in ctional content indicate their evolution
(Tous-Rovirosa, Meso and Simelio, 2013), they continue to be perpetuated; on the one hand, in those that show a biased vision of
a woman who has great obstacles to “appropriate the construction of her identity” (Díaz, 2022, p. 3) and, on the other, in those in
which the use of violence is associated with masculinity. e social superiority of man is revealed by making use of violence and
aggressiveness as an exercise of power, strength and virility and, therefore, within the framework of a patriarchal culture “violent
men are easily excused because they present their violence as something normal and natural” (Fisas, 1998, p. 15).
If this violence associated with masculinity gains strength in any area, it is in that of sexual violence. Rape or any other form of
sexual violence has a clear instrumental purpose, something that is manifested through control not only of the woman’s body,
but also of her freedom and sexual autonomy (Tardón, 2022). us, there are many plots in which sexual assault or abuse is
used to develop the most dramatic aspect of the characters: generally, the heroic, vengeful and powerful from the male point
of view (aggressor) and the compassionate, traumatic and fragile from the feminine point of view (victim). Regardless of this,
the common element that prevails in the victim’s prole is that they are sexually objectied to “legitimize the violence against
her by stripping her of her individuality and turning her into a product” (Criado, 2022, p. 62).
e exploitation of sexual violence as a narrative resource has not received adequate treatment on many occasions, because
consent is presented as an ambiguous concept, sexual violence is justied and thus creates problematic symbologies and
imaginaries (Byrne and Taddeo, 2019). e media’s (and, more specically, television’s) ability to shape and inuence the
perception schemes of viewers means that the approach on how to treat or address sexual violence in ctional content is
always the focus of attention, precisely because of the fear that they contribute to the normalization of this type of act or to the
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dissemination of an idealized or stereotyped image of both the aggressors and the victims; this favors sexual assaults against
women being seen as normal and acceptable (Aghtaie et al. 2018) and, therefore, society can internalize this ideology and this
can have an impact on their way of dealing with these situations, on their expectations and on their level of acceptance of said
sexual violence (Lundgren et al. 2001; Pornari, Dixon & Humphreys, 2013).
e stereotyping of the protagonists of sexual violence leads to the formation of myths around them and, therefore, women
(victims) are represented as people who want and deserve to be raped because of their attitude and provocative behavior;
they are shown as women who lie about their rape and who victimize themselves, while men (aggressors) are portrayed as not
being responsible for the rape and their sexual violence not being actually harmful (Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2011). All this
contributes to a staging of sexuality from a masculine prism, focused on “the interest and satisfaction of the desire of men”
(Herce, 2015, p. 136) and where the perspective of the woman either remains in the background, or appears hypersexualized
by representing a passive and submissive role that is combined with the need to “show oneself desirable, but at the same time
cautious when participating in a sexual relationship” (Herce, 2015, p. 138).
With all this, and despite the fact that, hegemonically, sexual violence has had men as aggressors and, as such, it has been
represented in ction this way, it does not mean that violence is an exclusive phenomenon of the male gender. Its staging in
the media corresponds to the mirror function that they develop by transferring what happens in society or, failing that, by
reducing reality in reductionist constructs to simplify it. us, being violent is a quality that is associated with men as proof of
a masculinity in which strength, aggressiveness and superiority take on special prominence, since from childhood they have
been raised under certain patterns and ideas that they must follow in order not to deviate from what is socially stipulated
(González y Fernández, 2009).
In this line, although the series represents, mainly, the man as a sexual aggressor, in some exceptional cases it can also represent
man as a victim. A man who suers an act of sexual violence moves away from what is stipulated in the masculine stereotype,
since it means accepting that he is vulnerable, fragile and lacks the strength and virility to defend himself against such an
oense. us, the scant representation in ction of men as victims of sexual assault or abuse, as well as the social inability
to conceive that a man can be raped in a daily context, corresponds to the silence of victims in real life (Kaufman, 1993). e
stigmatization of male victims of sexual violence is such in real life that it causes silence and invisibility in ctional content,
hence it becomes strange for a victim of rape, harassment, abuse, etc., to not be represented as a woman.
3. Design and methodology
3.1. Sample selection
e sample that makes up this work focuses on the television miniseries
I May Destroy You
, broadcast on HBO in June 2020.
e ction was created, co-directed and starred by Michaela Coel and has received numerous nominations and awards,
among which ve Bafta Awards (2021) and an Emmy Award (2021) stand out. In it, the author recounts the autobiographical
experience of Arabella, a young British writer who suers a sexual assault facilitated by drugs. is event marks the plot of
the miniseries, since throughout the episodes the consequences of this aggression for the protagonist are addressed, but the
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January-June of 2023
The representation of sexual violence in ction series: the case of
I May Destroy You
(HBO, 2020)
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
doxa.comunicación
dierent aspects of sexual violence are also represented and experienced by both Arabella and her own friends. e miniseries
has a season of 12 episodes, which make a total of 5 hours, 23 minutes and 42 seconds of viewing, as can be seen in the
following table:
Table 1. Episode list of
I May Destroy You (HBO, 2020)
EpisodeTitleDuration
1x1
Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes00: 28:19
1x2
Someone is lying
00:28:37
1x3
Don’t forget the sea
00:28:29
1x4
at was fun
00:29:35
1x5
It just came up
00:28:46
1x6
e Alliance
00:28:46
1x7
Happy animals
00:28:50
1x8
Line spectrum border
00:29:41
1x9
Social Media is a grear way to connect
00:28:58
1x10
e cause the cure
00:29:11
1x11
Would you like to know the sex?
00:29:31
1x12
Ego death
00:34:47
Source: prepared by the author
Of the total sample selected, only those acts of sexual violence that take place in the development of the plot will be studied.
at is why any other type of violence that is represented explicitly or implicitly in ction is excluded from the analysis. Below
are the acts of sexual violence on which the bulk of the analysis in this work is based and in which Arabella (the protagonist of
the miniseries), Kwame and Terry (friends of the protagonist and secondary characters of the miniseries) are involved:
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a) Sexual assault (Episode 1 and 2):
Arabella is the victim of a drug-facilitated sexual assault. One night she goes out for drinks with a friend, Simon, and his
coworkers, unknown to her. She takes a shot, dances with the group and begins to feel bad; she can’t stand up, falls to the
ground and tries to leave the venue on her knees, almost unable to walk. e next day she shows up at her workspace, where
she writes a draft of her novel. She goes outside and feels a little dazed and disoriented. It’s hard to get home. When she
succeeds and enters her room, images come to mind in which she can only see the face of a boy (low angle shot) who is panting,
sweating and blocking a door while pushing towards it. Arabella nds it impossible to clearly remember what happened, how
the party ended, and how she got to her workspace. She talks with her friend Terry and her roommate and together they
begin to discover some events that Arabella is unaware of (for example, that she withdrew money from an ATM in an area
quite far from where she went out with her friend), something which leads her to talk to Simon and one of his coworkers and
she comes to the conclusion that she was hurt and drugged. She decides to go to the police station to report what happened.
Two agents specialized in rape cases interrogate her to learn about her case, they perform some tests (including DNA), they
take photographs of her body (she has bruises and scratches) and go to her house to collect evidence (clothes and personal
belongings from the night of the alleged assault) to investigate what happened.
b) Terry’s sexual abuse (Episode 3):
Terry is the victim of sexual abuse by deception. On a trip she made to Italy to visit her friend Arabella, they both go out to have
fun at night. ey use drugs and alcohol. At one point, Terry tells her friend that she wants to go home and leaves alone. On the
way, Terry passes a cocktail bar. ere are people on the street, including two boys. Seeing her go by, one of them goes inside
the premises and the other goes to her and begins to atter her. He strikes up a friendly conversation with Terry and convinces
her to go into the club to dance. When the boy leaves for a few drinks, Terry is left alone and the other boy’s friend appears
on the scene (Terry has not realized that they both know each other). He invites her to dance and she agrees. When they are
dancing, the other boy appears, tells them to continue and nally the three of them end up in bed having a threesome. Terry
feels empowered because she has had sex with two men and tells Kwame over the phone. When the two boys leave the house,
Terry sees through the window how they both walk away together, laughing and with a lot of complicity, something that is a bit
strange because she assumed they didn’t know each other. Over time and after discussing it with her friends, she comes to the
conclusion that the sexual encounter was not fortuitous and that it occurred through deception, since the two boys devised a
plan to have sexual relations with her by pretending not to know each other.
c) Arabella sexual abuse (Episode 4):
Arabella is the victim of sexual abuse through deception. She meets Zain, a writer from the same publishing house where she
works who helps her nish her draft. ere is a strong connection between them and they end up having sex in Arabella’s room.
She asks Zain if he has a condom for her to put on and he does. In the middle of the sexual act and taking advantage of the fact
that her back is turned to him, Zain removes the condom without telling Arabella. At the end, Arabella realizes that the condom
has been removed and he justies it by saying that he felt uncomfortable and that he thought she had noticed, since she did
not say anything. She doesn’t seem too distraught, as she just tells him that now she has to take the pill and he has to pay for it.
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ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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d) Kwame’s sexual assault (Episodes 4 and 5):
Kwame is the victim of a sexual assault in which physical force is used. He has a date with a man through the dating app.
Kwame goes to the man’s house and they have consensual sex. When Kwame wants to leave, the other boy holds him back and
tells him to stay because they are going to play. Kwame tells him that he doesn’t want to have sex again, but the boy forcefully
restrains him, throws him on the bed, and rapes him despite Kwame’s repeated telling him to stop. Kwame’s reaction to this
event is silence and contradiction: he is unable to admit that he has been raped because he previously had consensual sex with
him. At rst he does not tell anyone about what happened, but then he decides to report it to the police station. Kwame feels
uncomfortable and humiliated at not nding empathy on the part of the agent who assists him. at is why he decides to leave
the police station and not report what happened.
e) Sexual abuse by Kwame (Episode 8):
Kwame sexually abuses a girl by cheating. After being raped and daring to tell her friends Arabella and Terry about it, Kwame
confesses that now he doesn’t feel safe to have relationships with boys and wants to try girls. He establishes contact with one
with whom he feels a strong connection and they speak frequently. ey meet one night for dinner and get to know each other.
Kwame accompanies her to her house and they have sex without him telling her that he is gay. When they’re done, they have
a nice chat in bed, but she starts talking a little inappropriately about homosexuals and he rebukes her comments by telling
her he’s gay. She doesn’t believe him at rst, but later she gets very angry and reproaches him for using her as a refuge and as
a new experience without previously warning her of his true intentions.
3.2. Methodology
To achieve the objectives of this work, an approach to the research corpus is carried out from an analytical-descriptive
perspective framed within the analysis of mixed content (Krippendorf, 1990, Piñeiro-Naval, 2020). Based on this methodological
design, the qualitative and quantitative contents are collected, analyzed and categorized to establish an interpretation and
integration between them. Content analysis is a technique widely used in the eld of communication, since it focuses on
“reducing large amounts of text (written, audio or audiovisual) to a number of more limited variables in order to establish
relationships between them and release meanings” (Peña, 2012, p. 48).
An analysis sheet is used, which has been rened and adapted during the viewing of the episodes which make up the ction
so that it meets the objectives of this paper. For its preparation, studies and reports on sexual violence and its victims are
used as a reference (OMS, 2013; Passos, Yela and Gonçalves, 2018; Fundación ANAR, 2020) and it collects the information
on the categories and variables of analysis which are structured in the following blocks of content: Characters, Acts of sexual
violence and Consequences of sexual violence. e rst has a greater breakdown than the rest, since it is the richest and most
interesting from the perspective of this research.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the analysis sheet pays special attention to the gure of the victim, since she is the
protagonist of two of the content blocks in order to know both her prole and the consequences or reactions she experiences
after the act of sexual violence. On the other hand, it should be noted that the rst two blocks of content have categories that
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are mutually exclusive, while in the last block they are not, thus allowing one or more of them to be selected at the same time.
e items registered in the analysis are shown in the following table:
Table 2. Analysis sheet
Characters
Aggressor
Number of aggressorsIndividual, Group
Sex
Male, Female
Age
Preteen, Teen, Young, Adult, Mature, Elder,
Undistinguishable
Level of disabilityLow, Moderate, Serious, Very serious, None shown
Role
Protagonist, Antagonist, Secondary character,
Recurrent, Other
Relationship with the victimKnown, Unknown
Victim
Number of victimsIndividual, Group
Sex
Male, Female
Age
Preteen, Teen, Young, Adult, Mature, Elder,
Undistinguishable
Level of disabilityLow, Moderate, Serious, Very serious, None shown
Role
Protagonist, Antagonist, Secondary character,
Recurrent, Other
Relationship with the aggressorKnown, Unknown
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I May Destroy You
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ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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Sexual violence acts
Type
Sexual abuse
Sexual harassment
Sexual assault
Location of the
assault
Home
Street
Leisure space
Workspace
Natural space
Other
Time frame
Diurnal
Nocturnal
Not observed
Witnesses
Witnesses
No witnesses
Not observed
Use of mobile
devices
Observed
Not observed
Consequences of
sexual violence
Reacción de la
víctima
Socially reported
Legally reported
Not reported
Damages
suered by the
victim
Mental health
Reproductive health
Physical damages
Behavioral damage
Fatal damage
Others
Overcoming by
the victim
Psychological Support
Support from the family environment
Work environment support
Support from friends
Support among victims of sexual violence
Others
Source: prepared by the author
e stages followed for the development of this research are the following:
a) Viewing of the 12 episodes that make up the miniseries.
b) Selection of the scenes in which acts of sexual violence take place.
c) Categorization of the selected scenes according to the analysis sheet.
Based on the data record, a quantication of the information is carried out, followed by an inference and qualitative
interpretation of them in order to obtain the results and the corresponding conclusions.
doxa.comunicación |
nº 36, pp. 125-144
|
January-June of 2023
Sara González-Fernández
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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4. Results
e results obtained are presented following the established structure of the analysis sheet. Graphs will be used in those cases
in which the results are more relevant and, therefore, they need a visual reinforcement to illustrate them:
4.1. Characters
First, the gure of the aggressor of the analyzed acts of sexual violence is characterized by the fact that in all of them there is
unanimity in the categories of sex, age and degree of disability: 100% of the scenes have male aggressors, of a young age group
and with no degree of disability. Regarding the number of oenders participating in the sexual act, 75% of the scenes have a
single oender while 25% have a group oender. is case corresponds to the case of sexual abuse that Terry suers when she
is the victim of a deception by two boys so that the three of them have sexual relations.
Regarding the role they play in ction, 20% of the aggressors are framed in the role of secondary character, another 20% of them
do it in the role of regular character and 60% do not identify with any role, since they are totally unknown in the weight of the
plot. It is striking that the gure of the aggressor does not correspond in any case to the role of protagonist or antagonist, the
characters that have the greatest weight in any story.
Finally, in the category of the relationship that the aggressor holds with his victim, in 80% of the cases there is no relationship
because the aggressor is completely unknown to the victim (as it occurs in the case of Arabella’s sexual assault or the sexual
abuse Terry suers) or partially (as it is the case in the acts of sexual violence in which Kwame is involved, since he exchanges
some conversations with the people with whom he has dates through a mobile app). e remaining 20% corresponds to the act
of sexual violence that has Arabella and Zain as protagonists, since their work relationship favors the closeness and complicity
that exists between them.
Secondly, the gure of the victim of the acts of sexual violence analyzed is characterized by unanimity in the categories of
number of victims, age and degree of disability: 100% of the scenes have victims who suer sexual violence individually (there
are no more victims with them), who belong to a young age group and who do not have any degree of disability. Regarding the
sex of the victims, 80% are women, while 20% are men, a percentage that corresponds only to the scene in which Kwame is the
victim of a sexual assault by one of the boys he knows through a mobile dating app.
On the other hand, the category referring to the role played by the victims in ction does present dierences with that of the
aggressors, since, in this case, 40% fall within the role of protagonist, represented by Arabella, another 40% falls within the
role of secondary character, represented by Terry and Kwame and the remaining 20% do not identify with any role, since it
is represented by the girl with whom Kwame has a sexual relationship through deceit and she does not have a prominent or
signicant role in the plot of ction. Finally, it should be noted that in the category corresponding to the relationship between
the victim and her aggressor, the results are the same as those presented.